At this point, I’ve managed to get through half of my weight loss goal and a little more than half of my reading goal. My weight loss stalled out a little bit, which is impressive considering that I was barely eating for the first half of last week…but, some weeks are like that, I guess. I’m not interested in losing hope, though; I’d like to see if I can rally to lose a few more pounds, even if it means that I won’t make my goal.

I suppose I could really put the pedal to the metal and find some insane way to lose weight – perhaps with one of those crazy cleanses that so many people like to use to remove ~whatever~ from their systems…but since I’m trying to make this weight loss sustainable, I’m chalking those up as just another fad and moving along. I have made it to all three of the Yoga Mondays I’ve had lined up for this session, and I’m really happy about that. It’s nice having yoga back in my life, and I just tend to do better with it when I’m in a class.

As far as books go, I happened upon a copy of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” while I was fishing through boxes of unwanted old books at our local YMCA a few weeks back, and it’s something I’ve wanted to read for a really long time. Having studied communism quite a bit during my senior year of college (I majored in Political Science), I was curious about Sinclair’s harsh take on the brutal capitalism seen in early Industrial America. So far, I’ve found it a bit of a slog – but I’m not giving up hope. Thus far, it’s been a vivid, depressing, sepia-toned view of life below the poverty line a century ago. That’s pretty much what I expected, so the fact that it’s not exactly an easy read isn’t shocking.

I’m also less than 100 pages in, and that’s the point where a book usually fishes or cuts bait for me; by then I’m usually either warmed up to the author’s style, and can make real progress, or I’m ready to find the author’s house and throw their book right at their nose. I hope to finish this one fairly soon, since it’s NOT a long read and I’d really like to make at least ONE of my goals for the year. Just over three months left to go.